Re: filmscanners: What is 4,000 scanner quality like in practice.

[Ray Amos <hamos@triad.rr.com>]

> On Wed, 23 May 2001 17:51:42 EDT   (TREVITHO@aol.com) wrote:
> 
> > If I got a 4000 desktop scanner of my own it would need to produce
> > about ten fully finished scans per hour to be worth considering. Is
> > this possible considering the amount of time that dust busting might
> > take?
> 
> IME with the Polaroid 4000, absolutely not. I achieve 1/hr - 4/hr,
> depending mostly on the amount of time needed to spot out dust.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Tony Sleep

Tony,     I've had the 4000LS long enough to scan a couple hundred
slides, many at 14-bits.  I have used digital Ice cubed on almost every
slide.  Every image has been examined in Photoshop at 100% magnification
and I have yet to find any spotting needed.  I previously used the Nikon
LS2000 and had to touch up scans regularly.  In my opinion, Nikon has
really improved the digital ice feature.  I cannot tell any difference
in sharpness "using" and "not using" digital ice cubed even when zoomed
side-by-side until you could see the pixels.

BTW, 14-bit color will blow your socks off!  Personally, I use 14-bit
scans when "Color is an important ingredient in the overall image".  The
down side is the size doubles.  PS converts it from 14-bits to 16-bits. 
My scans are a little over 100 MB and if you try to compress them using
Photoshop's LZW compression, the size actually increases.  Instead of a
30 MB compressed file you end up with a 110 MB non-compressed file.

Ray Amos